Day: April 29, 2017

We regularly open a few stories to the public – meaning that you don’t have to be a subscriber to read them – and the headline for those stories frequently contains the letters ‘ESPN’. Over the years we’ve learned that a lot of our readers are interested in the goings-on at the network.

I keep a running 30-day tally of the most popular stories across our websites, and the top story on the list today, with almost three times the traffic of the second story, was on ESPN getting ready to cut about 100 employees. All told, ESPN was in the headline of three of the top 10, and you could argue that it was an influential part of two other stories that related to online streaming of sports and cord cutting.

Other notes on the list: six of the 10 stories are about media, three of the headlines include the NFL, and the first item on the list that isn’t about either of those things is a link to our landing page for profiles of the 2017 Forty Under 40.

In previous years, the Forty Under 40 page would have had a lot more traffic, but this year we kept the list behind our pay wall until last Friday, the day after our annual Forty Under 40 banquet. That affected traffic, but we believe our most exclusive content should be offered first to the people who pay our bills.

Here’s the list of the stories that have led our traffic in the last 30 days: